Style: Black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Satan is lord
Thoughts: A new Abigor album. This is not just a new album. Every time Abigor releases a new opus upon the world it's an event.
These last few albums have arrived with no hype, no fanfare, hardly even an annoucement. The band said back in March of 2023 that this album had been recorded in full and was now awaiting the release process. Then silence. Nothing. For 9 months there was nothing... and then all the sudden it's here.
No release date announcement, no hype trailer, no singles, nothing. One day it just shows up for order on World Terror Committee's website. And now it's on my turntable.
I normally won't spend as much time on the style that the band chooses to release an album but I feel like it bears mentioning here. It's reflective of the attitude that Abigor have. They don't care about hype, they don't care if people miss the release, they don't care about anything but their art.
They don't make these records for me, or for anyone else except themselves. In doing so they are essentially giving a huge middle finger to any and all who would want to try to build hype around a release. These guys don't need that. They don't need anything from me or anyone else. They are doing their own thing and fuck everyone else.
That leads us to the music. When this first released and I only had a chance to listen one time I though that Abigor was revisiting the "Channeling the Quintessance of Satan" sound but with keyboards and Silenus on vocals. That notion was quickly dispelled after a second listen, but there are some things that make that a good starting point for the music.
The band has fully embraced the complex writing styles of that previous album on here. Many times there are at minimum three guitars. The music is chaotic and often shows no indication of when it is going to shift into something completely different (calling to mind Supreme Immortal Art). But these call backs to the past are more for a vague notion of what this album is, it is neither Supreme Immortal Art or Channeling the Quintessence of Satan more-so than I am Jesus Christ.
Taphonomia sees the band exploring many themes in a short amount of time. I feel like eight songs is not enough to cover the vast amount of ideas and concepts that the band has spread their net out over. There are so many riffs, so many individual moments on this album that each song feels longer than it actually is.
Take the opening to Soldaten Satans. The band starts with a surprisingly heavy and cohesive riff for a full measure before each of the instruments breaks into their individual strands. The lead guitar waves while the rhythm guitar zags. They shouldn't belong together but they somehow make it work.
The drums are surprisingly contained having minimal use of blast beats throughout the album. This allows the band to explore chaos at a slower pace, let it seep into the listener and fully erode my sanity before moving on.
As Soldaten Satans continues I'm pleasantly surprised to hear an audible bass and well placed electronics/keyboards. This by no means is anything like Fractal Possession, but there are subtle touches from time to time that are used to amplify this music rather than dominate it.
I've intentionally avoided trying to give a play by play on how the songs sound on here. That would make this already too long summary thousands of words. Just know that these songs are written with complexity and inaccessibility in mind. They won't get stuck in your head, Abigor has never been about that and that does not change here. The songs have a slower cadence to them before - this does not mean that blast beats are not here, they are just used sparingly instead. Silenus is as unhinged as he has been on the past few albums, including a fair amount of clean vocals. It's unmistakably Abigor.
I feel like I say this one every Abigor album, but there is no band that has experimented as much as these guys have and still remained entirely within black metal. They have nothing to prove to anyone anymore and the way this album was released shows that they know that. On their band camp page the band has a statement that sums them up better than I ever could: "Supreme and Immortal is the Art of the Devil."
Written February 5th 2024
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